The software industry is in the midst of change. As hand-held devices and tablets proliferate, the number of applications developed for and stored on these devices grows exponentially. Before this sea of change in the software landscape, personal computers (PCs) on average had from 8 to 45 applications installed per PC. On an average smart phone however, the average is closer to 85 applications per phone. Tablets likewise have an attach rate that averages about 60 applications per tablet. As online app-stores become more common, the application attach rate for hand-held devices, tablets and PCs is likely to increase even further.
Conventional backup systems are focused primarily on backing up an individual folder or a set of folders. When the inevitable system failure or hard drive crash occurs, such backup systems will recover folders or files, but the applications are not automatically reinstalled. Manually reinstalling the application and then restoring the data and associations between the data and the application is required. This task is exacerbated by the explosion in the number of applications found on PCs and other devices which can make the reinstallation process unmanageable.
System backup and recovery is further complicated as various categories of applications have different requirements for their backup needs. Some applications are self-contained on a device and only need to be reinstalled. Other applications may be hybrids where an application may reside on a device, but data associated with the application resides on the cloud. Similarly, an application may be a multi-hybrid, where some part of the application resides on the device, and some part of the application resides on the cloud, and where the data resides on both the device and the cloud.
The above-described deficiencies of conventional approaches to system and application backup and recovery are merely intended to provide an overview of some of the problems of conventional approaches and techniques, and are not intended to be exhaustive. Other problems with conventional systems and techniques, and corresponding benefits of the various non-limiting embodiments described herein may become further apparent upon review of the following description.